Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office released an update Monday from the Office of the Attending Physician confirming he remains in rehabilitation and doctors still haven’t cleared him to return to the Senate, more than six weeks after a fall at his Washington home last month.
The office said its doctors check in with McConnell every day as he works through rehab from the fall, describing a schedule of multiple physical therapy sessions daily meant to rebuild his strength and guard against another fall, with childhood polio remaining part of what’s slowing his mobility.
McConnell’s office also released a personal statement from the senator alongside a new photo of him with his wife, Elaine Chao, taken July 26.
The release said the senator is still working to get back to his full schedule in the Senate and in Kentucky, and that keeping up with intensive therapy means he won’t be able to attend this Saturday’s Fancy Farm Picnic, the annual western Kentucky political gathering he’s attended most years since first showing up 42 years ago.
Paramedics reportedly took McConnell to the hospital on June 14 after he fell at home. He confirmed in a July 12 statement, his first personal comment on the episode, that he was briefly unconscious and later developed pneumonia, and that doctors ruled out a heart attack, stroke, concussion, broken bones, tumors, and hemorrhage. He’s since moved to a rehabilitation facility for physical therapy.
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84-year-old McConnell last voted in the Senate on June 11 and has missed 38 roll call votes since, including on the annual defense policy bill and a resolution on the Iran war. His office has not given a timeline for his return, and the Senate is scheduled to leave for a monthlong recess on August 7.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear sent McConnell a letter demanding he either publicly demonstrate he’s capable of serving or resign, and asking Senate Majority Leader John Thune to investigate McConnell’s condition if he won’t.
Kentucky law bars Beshear from declaring the seat vacant on his own, so his letter functions as public pressure rather than something he can enforce directly.
